CERCLE 9

13 Carmen Giménez mostrant la sèrie/mostrando la serie/showing the series Les femmes de Venise , 1956 Sales d’exposició/Salas de exposición/Exhibition rooms. Foto/Photo Museo Nacional del Prado © Succession Alberto Giacometti (Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, París / VEGAP, Barcelona. 2019 An intriguing and different artist, the ‘perfect existentialist’ in Sartre's eyes. Contemplating his work, one can not help but imagine a restless, even tormented man... The dedication to art, and I mean the true dedication to art, the one where ‘the painter brings his body’, as Valéry would define the role of the artist in relation to his work, is undoubtedly one of the most complex devotions possible, and it demands a high degree of resistance in the face of adversity. Giacometti is an extraordinary example of an artist who gives his body to art and so much so that it is often impossible to separate his body, his presence and ultimately his being, from his work. Surely, the case of Giacometti is one of the most extraordinary examples in the history of art of this symbiosis between artist and work. He was an extremely austere being, attached to his work and his daily habits. Let's not forget that he lives, for a good part of his life, in his own studio on rue Hippolite-Maindron in Paris, twenty-three square metres, where he also does a good part of his work. That is why, returning to your question that surely he was an ‘ill-at- ease’ being —undoubtedly. Tormented? That too, but could you not be when your dedication to art is unconditional? Giacometti imposed the titanic challenge of representing ‘as we see’ or, rather, of giving an account of his particular look at reality. He had a way of working in which every day he restarted the work done the previous day. He tried to capture the essence of the other through his appearance. In 1957 Giacometti writes: 'Je ne sais pas si je travaille pour faire quelque chose ou pour savoir pourquoi je ne peux pas faire ce que je voudrais' 1 . That is to say, he can not do what he wants because he can't manage to depict what he sees. He wants to depict what he sees in order to see the real. According to the existentialist philosopher Jean- Paul Sartre, Giacometti's sculpture was ‘always halfway between nothingness and being’. They were great friends, although their relationship was not always easy. In his book Les Mots , Sartre personally reconstructed the car accident that Giacometti had in 1938. Giacometti was angry with Sartre for having described him in the Place de l'Italie and not in the Place des Pyramides, which is where it really happened, in addition to other inaccuracies. Something apparently insignificant, but the importance thereof for Giacometti was paramount. His relationship with existentialism does not seem so obvious to me, despite his well-known failed friendship with Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. It is true that he can easily be qualified as an existentialist sculptor, since there are many elements that point in this direction. I think that his work, in some way, transcends this temporal and determined philosophical ascription as existentialism, and that is why his work resists the passage of